The Ghosts Parade
by Rinkinkirs
Summary: I dreamed of meeting him again for years. We would be so happy together, Jasper and I. I never considered the possibility that he had moved on. Edward/Jasper. Deranged Edward. No vampirism.


**Summary:** "I dreamed of meeting him again for years. We would be so happy together, Jasper and I. I never considered the possibility that he had moved on."  
**Words:** 2,788  
**Notes:** I don't know what's with me and angst lately… Perhaps it's the rain. (I still think book-Edward would be seeing a psychiatrist if he was human.) Title is a song by Ed Harcourt.  
**Disclaimer:** I don't own.  
**Warnings:** cousin/cousin, AU (no vampires), deranged Edward, obsession, depression, miserableness… you get the picture.

This has not been betaed, so please tell me if you see something fishy. Constructive criticism will be appreciated.

* * *

**The Ghosts Parade**

Our first kiss was exciting, in that forbidden, exhilarating way. We were twelve. It was chaste, soft; hardly a kiss at all. I remember that we still shared the same bed, even though we had separate ones. We had been devoted to each other ever since our childhood, even before we were placed in the same foster home with Esme and Carlisle Cullen.

We were too devoted, the social workers said. We displayed a bond that was too passionate, too fervent.

Jasper was removed from the house when we were thirteen and they found us kissing behind the garage (I remember his lips, soft and gentle against mine in the rain). We insisted that we were just exploring a bit, but Esme was crying and Carlisle looked stern, and I knew that Jasper and I were going to be separated: they had seen too much to believe us. It wasn't healthy, they said, for cousins to be so close, especially young boys like us.

He was my first love. Not because he was beautiful – though he was, even with all the scars – but because we were entirely in tune with each other. He always seemed to know how I felt and what to say, and he could answer my questions with a smile or a shrug, and I would know exactly what it meant.

I had no idea where he was now. It had been four years. The Cullens had adopted me officially not long after Jasper disappeared, and two other children, one of them Esme's niece, had come to live with us. Eventually, they were adopted, too.

I had never forgiven them for taking him away from me. We had both experienced things that made us seem darker than others at our age – I'd hardly met any teenagers with a black humour like ours – but when I was with him, the world was filled with colours and life.

Four years later, now, and I'd only just been permitted to stop therapy. Apparently, my socialisation had been messed up when I was a child, and they told me I had a hard time distinguishing whether my feelings for Jasper were romantic or fraternal as we grew, since we had been inseparable for so long.

A load of crap, if you ask me. Fucking Freudian psychoanalysers.

Carlisle and Esme always kept their distance as the date Jasper had been taken from me approached. They knew I blamed them still. I may have loved them, but Jasper would always be an impenetrable barrier between us.

They were worried when I didn't seem to grow an interest in anyone else. My one venture into society was a brief fling with a girl named Isabella, who I didn't find particularly attractive but caused their suspicions of a "relapse" to dwindle. I was making such progress, after all.

She broke up with me to date another guy. Jacob, his name was. I had a lot of fun playing the injured party – I felt no blame in regard to my adopted family, seeing as they had hurt me more than I could ever hurt them. My revenge was petty, but it felt good to inspire guilt in someone I considered at blame. Esme gave me lots of hot chocolate. Even Rosalie's insults had less bite. The entire time, a black orb of laughter was stuck in my throat. I couldn't laugh at their kindness.

I was relieved when they told us we were moving: an old acquaintance of theirs lived there. They told me that they were in need of a change, that there were too many bad memories in our house. I could get away for a bit, they said, get over the heartbreak after Isabella. (At that point I almost laughed in their faces, but I couldn't stand the thought of Esme's tears or going to the therapists again.)

The place was called Forks, and it was a small community in Washington. Although I didn't know it yet, the only purpose it would serve was send me further into my childlike depression.

*

When I first saw him, I thought I was delusional – but he didn't disappear. He noticed me staring, and a bright smile lit his face, just like before the gloom set in four years ago.

He hugged me tightly, and I thought he was going to break my ribs. I chuckled, and we smiled at each other: when I leant forward to place a brief kiss on his lips, his face turned to the side. My lips fell on his cheek.

My heart sank, and I knew he could tell, but my acting had taken a turn for the better since he was taken away. If nothing else, the show had to go on, and if he didn't want a public scene, I wouldn't push it. I stepped back, feeling as if I'd stomped on my own lungs.

A girl came up behind Jasper – she was pretty, I supposed, for people who found petite, dark-haired girls pretty – and weaved her arm through Jasper's. He refused to look at me as he introduced us, telling her that I was his _cousin_, sending me a brief glance I couldn't quite understand.

I'd never loathed a word so much. _Cousin_. It rang through my mind like a curse.

"This is Alice," Jasper said, his smile not reaching his eyes. "My girlfriend."

In that single moment, my world crashed around me.

Later, I could hardly remember when I put my hand around Alice's instead of around her neck, greeting her with a serene face that didn't match the whirlwind of emotions behind it. I could hardly remember walking home, could hardly remember refusing Emmett's offer to drive me back to the house.

I remember Jasper's hand reaching out as I left, not thinking about classes, school or timetables. I remember Esme's face when I yelled at her, of how much I hated them and that it was their fault that he didn't love me anymore; her scared face, eyes wide open in fright as I shook her arms. Emmett punched me.

I didn't leave my room for days.

Emmet and Rosalie, Esme's niece, had never heard of Jasper before. Until then, it had been a mutual understanding between Carlisle, Esme and I – we would never mention him, never risk another of my screaming fits again. And now he was _there_, tangible and real once more, and I still couldn't have him. I had dreamed of meeting him again, and it wasn't like this. We were all sunshine and daisies in my daydreams, holding hands, all the giddy and sweet shit they do in movies.

I'd lost even my dreams, now. Somehow, not knowing had been so much better.

*

I found them talking in the living room when I finally came outside again. According to my phone, it had been five days, and I looked like a ghost. I sat at the bottom of the stairs as Emmett and Rosalie were let in on the important things; they had to know, seeing as I could "lose control again" and "be a danger to others". My "obsession" with Jasper, they called it. They didn't know I was listening. My hands started shaking: they were going to send me to _the ward_ again.

I did the only thing I could think of – I ran.

*

I have no idea how I found his house. I can't even remember knocking, but I remember his face when he saw the state I was in. He helped me in the shower, fed me and gathered blankets and a pillow for the sofa. No words were spoken, and I just looked at him, and he looked at me. Regret shone in his eyes, but I didn't know whether it was because we had allowed our relationship to go out of control or because he still wanted me, if he ever had. I didn't dare believe it anymore. The past week had had its fair share in shattering the last convictions I was clinging to, and I had already realised that I'd spent more than four years of my life in stasis, neither growing nor changing.

The love was still there, but I had clung to my childish feelings of belonging and jealousy, thinking I owned him. It seemed so silly, now.

*

When I woke up the next morning, there was a note on the table. Jasper was at school, and he would be back some time around two o'clock. It was already one.

I was still sitting on the sofa when he returned, staring at the wall. My despair from the evening before was gone, replaced by a heavy blanket of lethargy. He sat down on the table in front of the sofa – too close, too far away.

"Edward," he began. I could see my reflection in his eyes: I was a pitiful sight.

He sighed and sat down beside me instead, measuring by my level of cognition that I wouldn't be able to do anything more than the basic necessities of life at the moment, and hardly that. I curled into his side, his arm wrapped around my shoulders. Jasper sighed again, shifting uncomfortably.

"I thought you would be over that by now," Jasper said quietly. "We were young. Children."

I shook my head, closing my eyes.

"Edward… I do love you," he said. He put his warm hand on my arm, brushing up and down. "But it would be wrong, and you know that."

"I'm a monster, aren't I?" My voice was flat. "They told me I was fixed. The therapists. I lied to them, you know. I told them I'd stopped thinking of you. That I'd come to terms with everything."

I felt numb, though Jasper's pitying eyes stabbed the inside of my stomach with a needle, and something was crushing my windpipe. Jasper turned away from me with another sigh.

Was I so disgusting that he couldn't even look at me?

And then, Jasper's voice rung through my head, comforting and heart-wrenching at the same time.

"Your only fault was loving me too deeply. We both do- _did_." Jasper smiled at me – the insincere smile he always used when he was miserable – and rose from the sofa. "I need to get going. You can stay here for a while. Warm something in the micro if you get hungry, all right?"

I didn't answer.

"Well… see ya. I'll be back by seven."

Even as I wanted to drown myself in rain, his slip up had formed a hopeful hearth of warmth in my chest. I hated myself for not letting go; not letting him have a chance at what I considered uncomplicated happiness, but I could not. I had made him my life, and now I had to live with it at arm's length.

*

With some time (and psychiatrists), I found that I genuinely liked Alice. A part of me still hated her, but I managed by separating Alice-the-girlfriend and Alice-the-girl. Jasper would always be a person I cherished above everyone else, but for that reason I found that when the fight was lost, I had to let him go – at least for a while. (This show of maturity astounded no one as much as it did me.)

We spent more time together as a group, too, and I came to love Jasper for the person he was, not the person he had been; the same, familiar smile; the new gesture of brushing his hand through his hair when agitated, a reminder of me. He was much more soft-spoken and mature, and I felt ashamed that while he had decided to grow up, I had barricaded myself in the past. I wouldn't allow myself to fall into the same trap again – I would love him till I came to an end, but I couldn't be any good to him if I kept the mentality of a child in a man's body. For me, there was a fair amount of growing up remaining.

Only six months later they broke up. Jasper said it had nothing to do with me, but I could tell he was lying. Alice had confessed that she saw me as a competitor for Jasper's affection, and since we were already connected on a profound level they had never reached, she feared that her own jealousy would drive her away. She didn't use as many words, but I could tell. Reading people had always been one of my talents, however lacking I was in other areas.

Jasper didn't seem too upset when he told me. I think he had realised that we were broken by then. We were too twisted around each other to revolve around anyone else, and although he still refused to acknowledge me (the _cousin_ curse, again), I knew it was only a matter of time.

Esme would have hated to see my possessive behaviour rearing its head again, so I told no one, struggling with the monster inside me on my own. If there was one thing I had learned, it was that I wouldn't let them suffer on my behalf again.

I had lied so much. Hurt them, both intentionally and unknowingly. A constant, suffocating cloud of guilt surrounded me, and it was all I could do to function. I could tell Jasper was concerned, which prompted another bout of intense guilt for causing everyone even more worry than before (although how that could be possible, I wasn't sure).

This was the first time it occurred to me that I didn't deserve him.

Jasper was a wonderful person. He was gentle and caring, ruthless when provoked, and he did everything in his power to keep those he cared about safe and happy. I was lucky enough to fall into that category, despite my shortcomings.

I waited for a sign that he cared about me like he did before. It didn't come.

As I sank further and further into my own thoughts again, it didn't occur to me that I was far too gone to recognise the glances he sent me, or the hugs that lasted for too long.

I woke up in _the ward_ a few weeks later, dosed up on happy pills and not remembering how I ended up there. Disconcerting. I'd always done anything to avoid it since that first time, and when I was there again, I couldn't even remember how or when.

I spent most of the time drugged off my arse until they were sure I wouldn't do anything stupid to myself. (Apparently I had. I couldn't remember.) Jasper came to visit me a few times, but the first days after I "woke up" I was hardly able to recognise him. When I did, I started feeling guilty for raising hell again.

Would it never end?

*

Jasper was sitting by my side on the hospital bed, both of us resting against our heads against the headboard. He read to me often, these days. I had too many headaches to read much myself, but his voice was soft and pleasant.

"Why do you read this book when you hate it so much?" I asked him when he finished the chapter. Once again, he'd brought _Wuthering Heights_.

He smiled at me, the sheepish smile I hadn't seen in years that made my heart clench.

"We're just like them," Jasper said. There was a hint of sadness in his voice. "Consumed by our own world, too much in love…"

"Which am I, Cathy or Heathcliff?"

He chuckled, shaking his head.

"I'm a bit like Heathcliff," I said, answering my own question. "Wasting my life on bitterness and jealousy, looking for my lost love."

"So I'm Cathy, huh?"

He was amused. I snickered.

"Well, you're such a pretty little thing…" I murmured, lifting a hand up to shove his hair behind his ear.

A startled laugh left his lips, and I couldn't help but join him. Not long after, we were lying down on the bed, convulsing so much in our laughter that we almost fell off the edge. My stomach hurt.

"I haven't heard you laugh in so long," Jasper whispered.

We were close, and I thought again of that day in the rain, young lips, soft and careful.

He kissed me again.

My eyes closed; I was simply feeling, letting the gentle brush of chapped lips overwhelm me. It lasted for just a few seconds, but it made our years apart worth the effort of finding each other again.

I looked into his eyes. Things would never be perfect, and I knew that in my state, they would probably not be good for a long while.

But for us too, there was hope.


End file.
